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A Generation Of Mashup Religion

We are now seeing the Mashup Generation emerge into adulthood, using technology to combine sources of information with a fluidity that would have been difficult to anticipate just two decades ago. The practice of mashup doesn’t respect traditional boundaries between media, or boundaries between ideas.

Given this, it isn’t surprising that young adults today are the most secular in all of American history. It isn’t that they aren’t in search of deep meaning. It’s just that traditional ways of seeking meaning seem shallow and linear to them. According to the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, one out of every five Americans under the age of 30 now self-identifies as unaffiliated with any religion.

The old churches and temples seem increasingly less relevant to a generation that is used to playing with information and insights from around the globe, and no, giving a religious congregation a Facebook page won’t be enough to bring young Americans back. The situation seems ripe for the development of new channels for deeper thought.

What forms might new deep thought take? What will people call them?

For the sake of easy language, is it appropriate to call these new forms “religion”?

If so, what could these new manifestations of mashup religion look like? The old fight is between theism and atheism, but could new religions simply sidestep this question, developing godless religions?

What boundaries need to be broken? What concepts need to be combined?

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About the authorJim Cook

I haven't been everywhere, but I've lived lots of places in the USA: the North, the South, the East, the West, and places in between. Every place I've been, I've seen acts large and small of kindness, callousness and disregard. Here we are. What will we do?

It is a time of fear in the face of freedom, a time of an emptying country and swelling cities, a time for the widening of previous roads and the opening of new paths, yet a time when these paths are mined by knowing algorithms of the all-seeing eye. It is the time of the warrior's peace and the miser's charity, when the planting of a seed is an act of conscientious objection. These are the times when maps fade, old landmarks crumble and direction is lost. Forwards is backwards now, so we glance sideways at the strange lands through which we are all passing, knowing for certain only that our destination has disappeared. We are unready to meet these times, but we proceed nonetheless, adapting as we wander, reshaping the Earth with every tread. Behind us we have left the old times, the standard times, the high times. Welcome to the irregular times.